How We Will Pay

HOW WE WILL PAY 2018 EDITION

Every year since 2003, the Bureau of Labor Statistics has published a study of how Americans use their time. Very little has changed over the course of those last 15 years. There are still only 24 hours in the day, and, last year, Americans used those 24 hours in much the same way as they did in 2016, 2010 and 2003. The average American spent 9.6 hours sleeping and getting ready for bed, worked 3.6 hours, shopped 0.7 hours, watched TV for 5.2 hours, cooked and cleaned for 1.8 hours and spent the rest of their day on a variety of other things, including commuting to and from work.

What has changed, dramatically so, is how the internet has created seamless payments experiences for consumers as they go about their days. People now commute to work in connected cars that can find gas stations and use apps to “autopay” for gas, parking and coffee. Consumers can surf the internet on their televisions and purchase retail goods of all varieties, sometimes directly from the shows they are watching. They can even shop on social media apps while reading updates from friends and family in their newsfeeds. With voice-activated speakers sitting on their counters, desks and coffee tables, consumers can build a grocery shopping list and place an order for delivery, all while cleaning or cooking dinner.

This is how consumers are using these devices today, and how they want to use them even more in the future.

In collaboration with Visa, PYMNTS asked 2,800 U.S. consumers about the devices they own and how they use them to buy things. We also asked those consumers about the purchases they made in the past seven days, the devices they used to make those purchases and why they made a purchase with that device in that way.

We studied the usage of connected devices such as smartphones, desktops, laptops, tablets, smart televisons, voice-activated assistants and cars with connected dashboards, among others.

This is the second year of this study, so we were eager to observe how those consumer trends have evolved since last year’s study.